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Introduction

The British Library (Public Domain)

The writers of the British Isles, including England, Scotland, and Wales, have produced a great wealth of literature. The language in which English literature is written has evolved over hundreds of years and is still changing. English-speaking people of other countries, including Canada, the United States, and Australia, are indebted to England for a literary heritage. The history of Irish literature is also closely linked with that of English literature. (See alsoAmerican literature; Australian literature; Canadian literature; Irish literature.)

Old English Literature

The beginnings of English literature appeared in the 7th or 8th century ad. After the Romans withdrew their troops from Britain in 410, there followed a long period of social unrest, war, and turbulence. The Britons were forced to defend themselves alone against Picts and Scots from Scotland. Then the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes came from the European continent. They plundered city after city. If these invaders left any literature, none of it has survived. By the middle of the 6th century the Britons had been pushed to the western borders of England, where they set up small tribal governments. When this society became established, English literature began.

In 597 Pope Gregory I sent Augustine to convert the British to Christianity. He established a Benedictine abbey at Canterbury as the seat of his diocese. This became the center of learning and scholarship of all Western Europe.

Early Works of Scholarship

Bede the Venerable, a monk, was the greatest Anglo-Saxon scholar. His beautifully written Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (Ecclesiastical History of the English People) is a monumental account of his times.

Another monk, Alcuin, was probably the most learned man in the Europe of his time. He was a liturgical reformer and was largely responsible for the revival of Latin scripts under Charlemagne. Alfred the Great made contributions to this already rich literature by writing in the native tongue and encouraging scholarly translations from Latin into Old English (Anglo-Saxon).

Alfred translated some Latin texts himself into the tongue of the West Saxons; and it was under him, probably, that the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle was begun. This history of the chief events of each year is of prime importance to historians. Under Alfred, Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica also was translated from the Latin, so that the people could study their past.

Old English Poetry

Beowulf, the most notable example of the earliest English poetry, is an odd blend of Christianity and paganism. Old English, the language of Beowulf, is the source of modern English. Although Old English differed greatly from the language of today, much of the vigor and precision of modern English comes from the many Anglo-Saxon forms still used. The older language was a highly inflectional one; that is, it had many case endings for the nouns, pronouns, and adjectives and a complex system of verbs. It resembled modern German in grammar and in much of its vocabulary as well.

The story of Beowulf takes place in lands other than England, but the customs and manners described were those of the Anglo-Saxon people. This epic poem describes their heroic past. It tells of Beowulf’s three fierce fights—with the monster Grendel, the equally ferocious mother of Grendel, and the fiery dragon. By conquering them, Beowulf saves his people from destruction.

The versification of Beowulf is highly stressed, with the strong beats falling upon syllables that alliterate—(that is, which repeat the same sound). These lines illustrate this forceful technique:

Lonely and waste is the land they inhabit,Wolf-cliffs wild and windy headlands.

Much of Old English poetry, such as The Battle of Brunanburg and The Battle of Maldon, is heroic and martial. The Wanderer and The Sea-Farer have a sad and pleasing lyric quality.

Only two Old English poets are known by name. Caedmon was an unlearned cowherd. According to legend, he was inspired by a vision and miraculously acquired the gift of poetic song. Unfortunately, only nine lines by this first known poet survive. The second known poet was Cynewulf. Little is known of him except that he signed his poems in a kind of cypher, or anagram, made up of ancient figures called runes (an alphabet used by early Germanic tribes preceding the use of the Roman alphabet in England). His poems, such as Christ, deal with religious subjects.

Middle English Literature

In the Battle of Hastings, fought on Oct. 14, 1066, Harold II, last of the Anglo-Saxon kings, was killed. William the Conqueror then assumed the kingship. After subduing vicious resistance, he established a rule that was almost entirely Norman-French. The Norman Conquest greatly changed English life. All positions of power were filled by Frenchmen. Over all the old English vigor was imposed this foreign culture.

The Old English language went untaught and was spoken only by “unlettered” people. The language of the nobility and of the lawcourts was Norman-French; the language of the scholars was Latin. This situation lasted for nearly 300 years. During this period the Old English language changed. Its old case endings broke down, and the grammar became quite simple. Anglo-Saxon words were lost, and French words were added. The strong, crude iron of the Old English language was being slowly shaped into the flexible steel of present-day English.

The cult of chivalry came into being, fed by the great Crusades. The tales of King Arthur and his Round Table were a result of this movement. Education flourished, and the first universities, Oxford and Cambridge, were founded in the 12th century.

During these 300 years there was little literature in the changing English language. The few lyrics (Sumer is icumen in, Alysoun, 1300?) and other works (Ormulum, 1200?; Layamon’s Brut, 1205?) have a small interest.

The Middle English period also marked the beginning of a native English drama, which was at first closely associated with the church. About 900 the antiphonal chant “Quem quaeritis in sepulchre, o Christocolae?” was first used preceding the Introit of the Mass. Other dramatic additions were made to the sacred offices, and soon dialogue between individual members of the choir was added in celebrations of certain feast days. Finally, miniature dramas developed. In time these little plays (or tropes), becoming more secular, were moved outdoors.

The early cycles of miracle and mystery plays possibly began as celebrations of traditional religious feasts and fasts. In any case, by the end of the 14th century the observances of certain festivals—for example, Corpus Christi—regularly involved pageants. These plays were staged in larger towns, such as York, Wakefield, and Chester, on wagons that were moved from place to place in a procession, perhaps chronological, of events.

In addition to mystery and miracle plays, morality plays were also popular at the end of the Middle English period. They usually personified such abstractions as Health, Death, or the Seven Deadly Sins and offered practical instruction in morality.

Chaucer Heralds a New Literature

By the end of the 14th century the language (in its altered form called Middle English) was being used by nobles as well as commoners. In 1362 it became the language of lawcourt pleadings, and by 1385 it was widely taught in place of French.

Most of the great literature of the time was written from 1360 to 1400, a good part of it by one man, Geoffrey Chaucer. Chaucer was one of the world’s greatest storytellers. His Canterbury Tales is a masterpiece, with characters who remain eternally alive—the Wife of Bath, with her memories of five husbands; the noble Knight, returned from heroic deeds; his gay young son, the Squire (“He was as fressh as is the month of May”); the delightful Prioress (“At mete [meat] wel ytaught was she with alle/ She leet [let] no morsel from hir lippes falle.”); and entertaining scoundrels, such as the Friar, Summoner, and Pardoner.

At the same time as Chaucer, another man was writing in the northern part of England. He is known as the Pearl Poet, from the name of one of his four poems in an old manuscript. Generally he is remembered for his narrative poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

There are a number of poems about Sir Gawain (just as there are about Sir Lancelot, Sir Perceval, and King Arthur), but this is the best. Unfortunately, it is written in the Lancashire dialect and is almost as difficult to read as Old English. Chaucer may be read with a little study because the Midland dialect in which he wrote became the standard one for English writing. Even in translation, however, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is fascinating.

Another poet contemporary with Chaucer was William Langland, a figure almost as shadowy as the Pearl Poet. His masterpiece, also in a somewhat difficult dialect, is The Vision of Piers Plowman. It consists of a series of dream-visions in which human life passes in review. Langland wrote with power and sincerity. He attacked the social ills of his time, rebuked evildoers, and urged men to “learn to love.”

Legends and Ballads

Ann Ronan Picture Library/Heritage-Images

For nearly 200 years after the death of Chaucer there were almost no great literary works produced in England. One noteworthy exception is Le Morte d’Arthur, by Sir Thomas Malory. Malory made up this great collection of stories about King Arthur and his knights of the Round Table from the Arthurian legends circulating in French plus the English romances about the knights. Le Morte d’Arthur was the main source for later retellings of the stories.

Another outstanding literary achievement of the times was the creation of the great English and Scottish ballads. These were probably sung by people at social gatherings. The ballads preserved the local events and beliefs and characters in an easily remembered form. It was not until several hundred years later that people began to write down these ballads. They are immensely vivid stories that modern readers find especially attractive. Three familiar ballads are The Wife of Usher’s Well, about her three ghost sons; Sir Patrick Spens, concerning his death by drowning; and Edward, about his murderous revenge.

The Renaissance in English Literature

During the 15th century an intellectual movement called the Renaissance swept Western Europe. The word means “rebirth” and refers especially to the revival of ancient Greek learning. For centuries scholars in Italy, Spain, and elsewhere had been translating the ancient works into Latin. Printing from movable type, invented about 1450, provided the means for circulating the books widely. This spread of ancient learning kindled a new spirit of inquiry and hastened the overthrow of feudal institutions.

Some modern scholars have questioned whether a total rebirth of learning actually took place. There had been, for example, Latin scholars in the earlier medieval period. It is certain, however, that something did happen in the course of the 15th century that changed the history of Western civilization and the set of people’s minds.

For England, the year 1485 is a convenient date for marking this change from medievalism. In that year two significant events took place: the Wars of the Roses ended on Bosworth Field and William Caxton printed Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur.

The printing of Le Morte d’Arthur was a radical departure from the past. Before Caxton established his first press in England, Johannes Gutenberg and his partners had printed the Bible, in about 1455, in Germany, and printers were at work in several other European countries before the end of the 15th century. Caxton, however, turned to his native language rather than to Latin for his text. His first printed book was The Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye (1475), which he translated.

Before the end of the century he printed several more books in English, including Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (1478). The number of presses quickly increased in England, and with them, of course, the number of printed books.

Writing was a social fashion of this time, a pastime enjoyed by the nobles as well as by men of lower stations. Henry Howard, earl of Surrey, and Sir Thomas Wyatt are two striking instances of a talent for poetry existing in men of affairs. Although active in England’s service, in their short lives the two became familiar with French and Italian verse forms. They adapted the Italian sonnet for English use, and Surrey introduced blank verse in his translation of the Aeneid.

A third nobleman with a talent for writing was Sir Philip Sidney. He wrote a beautiful sonnet series, Astrophel and Stella (1591), and produced a tremendously long and somewhat tedious novel called Arcadia (1590). These men wrote only for amusement, but they also gave money and encouragement to poor, struggling writers.

Spenser and Marlowe

Edmund Spenser, also active in public service, was much more the professional man of letters than Wyatt or Sidney. His Shepheardes Calender (1579) is made up of 12 poems, one for each month of the year. These poems were more charming than any England had seen for 200 years. Spenser wrote many other poems, including a sonnet series called Amoretti (1595).

The Faerie Queene (1589–96), Spenser’s masterpiece, was left unfinished, but the 6 books written, out of 12 planned, are of great length. The Faerie Queene is an elaborate allegory built on the story of a 12-day feast honoring the Queen of Fairyland (Elizabeth I). Spenser worked out a poetic stanza well adapted to telling a story, a special form that is now known as the Spenserian stanza.

Christopher Marlowe promised more greatness than he achieved. He died at 29, stabbed in a tavern brawl. A line from his own Doctor Faustus is his best epitaph: “Cut is the branch that might have grown full straight.” His plays, such as Tamburlaine (1587?) and Doctor Faustus (1588?), bring passion and tragedy onto the stage in lines of great force.

Thomas Kyd is known for his very successful play The Spanish Tragedy (1587?). To a modern audience it is an overwhelming story of carnage. It is exciting drama, however. Some critics believe that Kyd also wrote a tragedy of Hamlet which became the source for Shakespeare’s great play.

Shakespeare—Genius of Drama

The great genius of the Elizabethan Age was William Shakespeare. He wrote more than 35 plays as well as 154 sonnets and 2 narrative poems (Venus and Adonis, 1593; The Rape of Lucrece, 1594).

Like Chaucer, Shakespeare had a genius for telling a story. Although he generally took over stories already told by others, his adaptations of these narratives made them into something new and wonderful. Shakespeare surpassed even Chaucer in creating character. Noble and disturbed Hamlet, pathetic Ophelia, wise Portia, ambitious Macbeth, witty Rosalind, villainous Iago, dainty Ariel—these are a few of the characters Shakespeare made immortal.

In addition to his ability to tell a story and to create character, Shakespeare was able to use words brilliantly. Phrases and whole lines from his works have become part of daily speech—for example, “the milk of human kindness” or “the play’s the thing.” Entire speeches are universally familiar—“To be or not to be,” from Hamlet; “All the world’s a stage,” from As You Like It; “The quality of mercy is not strained,” from The Merchant of Venice.

No one in all history has had a greater command of the right word, the unforgettable phrase, or the sentence that strikes straight to the heart of the truth. (See alsoWilliam Shakespeare at a glance.)

Jonson and His Volpone

Contemporary with Shakespeare was Ben Jonson. Many people once thought him to be a greater playwright than Shakespeare because his plays (Every Man in His Humor, 1598; The Alchemist, 1610) are more “correct”—that is, they are more carefully patterned after the drama scheme of the ancient Greek and Roman writers.

Only later did critics begin to prefer the deeper genius of Shakespeare and to realize that mechanical “correctness” is not the highest aim of a play or poem. Jonson’s comedy Volpone (1606?) is a comical and sarcastic portrait of a wealthy but selfish old man who keeps his greedy would-be heirs hanging on his wishes, each thinking that he will inherit Volpone’s wealth.

After the greatest days of Shakespeare and Jonson, the English drama declined in excellence. A taste for melodrama and sensationalism hurt much of the excellent writing done by such dramatists as John Webster, Thomas Middleton, and John Ford. These playwrights took such liberties with their subjects and with the language that in 1642 the Puritan reformers controlling London ordered that the theaters be closed. They did not reopen officially until the Restoration of 1660. Then a new sort of drama arose, one much influenced by French dramatic styles and methods.

The King James Bible

One of the supreme achievements of the English Renaissance came at its close, in the King James Bible. This translation was ordered by James I and made by 47 scholars working in cooperation. It was published in 1611 and is known as the Authorized Version. It is rightly regarded as the most influential book in the history of English civilization.

There had been translations of the Bible before 1611. William Tyndale first translated the New Testament from the Greek into English (1525). Miles Coverdale made the first complete translation of the Bible into English using Tyndale’s version (1535). There had also been other translations, but the King James Version combined homely, dignified phrases into a style of great richness and loveliness. It has been a model of writing for generations of English-speaking people.

Changing Mood in the 17th Century

The 17th century has sometimes been called an age of transition, sometimes an age of revolution. It was both, though much of the revolution of thought had actually been accomplished by the end of the 16th century.

The difficulties that brought about such fierce political and social struggles as resulted in the civil war and the government under Oliver Cromwell are mirrored in the writings of the 17th century (seeEngland, “History”). The old unity of Elizabethan life was gone. The national pride of the English lessened as the Crown lost dignity through the behavior of James I, Charles I, and Charles II. A new middle class began to show its power.

The glowing enthusiasm of such men as Marlowe and Spenser gave way to a cool, scientific attitude, to a spirit that studied small details rather than large generalizations and looked to the world of fact more than to that of the imagination. Late in the 16th century Sir Francis Bacon had taken “all knowledge for his province”—a typical Renaissance ambition. Later, scientists would stake out much smaller and more workable claims. Exploration on the grand scale gave way to exploitation of the discoveries and to colonization and trade, activities that helped the mercantile class to wealth and power late in the century.

17th-Century Prose

The 17th century was an age of prose. Interest in scientific detail and leisurely observation marked the prose of the time. This new writing style emphasized clarity, directness, and economy of expression. It first appeared just before 1600 in the Essays of Bacon. The physician Sir Thomas Browne wrote with dry precision in Pseudodoxia Epidemica (1646), as he amusingly and gravely discussed such beliefs as “an elephant hath no joints” or “hares are both male and female.”

Robert Burton was one of the “originals” of his age. His Anatomy of Melancholy (1621) is important not only as a document of 17th-century thought but also as one of the first attempts to explain human behavior in materialistic terms. This rambling and much-revised book is a storehouse of medical lore and fact, moral observation, and anecdote. In recent times scholars have recognized that Burton’s observations were deeply perceptive.

Jeremy Taylor, a brilliant student and preacher, wrote Holy Living (1650) and Holy Dying (1651). He was one of the great prose writers of the period. Izaak Walton is famous for his biographies and The Compleat Angler (1653). The former began when he was asked to write a brief life of John Donne. The Compleat Angler delights readers whether they are fishermen themselves or are only slightly interested in what Walton called the “contemplative man’s recreation.”

Bunyan and Pepys

The prose masterpiece of the century was The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678). John Bunyan had studied the King James Version of the Bible; with it as a style model, he wrote a study of a Christian’s journey through life and the difficulties that beset him as he tries to reach the Celestial City. The Pilgrim’s Progress was, for more than 200 years, second only to the Bible in popularity. Even today it is much read for its vigorous scenes of English country life.

The religious zeal of Bunyan contrasts with the cavalier spirit of Samuel Pepys. As secretary to the Admiralty, Pepys was a career man. He loved London and its life, and he recorded his daily experiences in shorthand and cipher in a diary (published in 1825). It is a splendid book of gossip, a record both of trivial matters, such as the behavior at court, and of major events, such as the Great Plague (1664–65) and the Great Fire (1666). Pepys’s Diary is a window on the last part of the 17th century in England.

Milton—Puritan Poet

The sober, scientific spirit of the 17th century did not destroy poetry. The great poet of the first half of the century was John Milton, a Puritan who served Cromwell as Latin secretary. He first wrote some short poems, the best known being L’Allegro (1645) and Il Penseroso (1645). The first tells of the day’s activities of a cheerful man, and the second, of the night’s activities of a thoughtful scholar. A music-play (or masque) known as Comus was produced in 1634, with music composed by Henry Lawes. Milton’s greatest early poem is Lycidas (1638), a lament on the death of a college friend.

Milton’s service under Cromwell brought on blindness, but this did not stop his writing poetry. He dictated his masterpiece, Paradise Lost (1667), to his daughters. This is an epic poem telling of the fall of the angels and of the creation of Adam and Eve and their temptation by Satan in the Garden of Eden (“Of Man’s first disobedience, and the fruit/ Of that forbidden tree . . . ”). It is written in blank verse of great solemnity.

Paradise Regained (1671) is Milton’s sequel to Paradise Lost. He considered the later work his masterpiece, but most readers have not agreed with him. Milton’s last work is a blank-verse tragedy in the ancient Greek manner. It deals with the story of Samson and Delilah. Samson Agonistes (1671) is in many ways Milton’s allegorical description of himself as a Samson bound in chains by his enemies, the followers of King Charles II.

The Metaphysical and the Cavalier Poets

An important group of 17th-century writers were the metaphysical poets. Metaphysical poetry makes use of conceits—that is, of farfetched similes and metaphors intended to startle the reader into an awareness of the relationships among things ordinarily not associated.

John Donne was the greatest of the metaphysical poets. His chief subject was love as it perfects humankind. He never treated the subject profanely. He was occasionally earthy, but only because he recognized that humans are creatures who must love in a natural way. His poem The Extasy is a celebration of sacramental love. His prose is as rich as his poetry, but nothing can match the mastery of such poetry as his Hymne to God My God, in My Sicknesse.

George Herbert, like Donne, was both a metaphysical poet and an Anglican priest. Some of Herbert’s most effective poetry deals with humankind’s thirst for God and with God’s abounding love. Herbert’s collection, The Temple (1633), was published posthumously (he probably did not intend his poetry to be published). Andrew Marvell, Richard Crashaw, and Henry Vaughan were other metaphysical poets of merit. Most easily understood, perhaps, is Marvell, at least in the well-loved lyric To His Coy Mistress.

Dryden—Giant of the Late 1600s

The major literary figure of the last quarter of the century was John Dryden. Such poems as Absalom and Achitophel (1681–82) and Alexander’s Feast (1697) establish his superiority in both satire and lyric. He was also the leading dramatist, writing both comedy (Marriage-à-la-Mode, 1673; The Kind Keeper, 1680) and tragedy (Aureng-Zebe, 1676) of great popularity. His translation of Virgil’s Aeneid is still widely read for its poetry alone. In addition, he was the leading critic of his time. Much of what Dryden wrote, however, is so closely connected with political and social events of his day that to read it requires a scholar’s knowledge of the period. The virtues of his best writing—clarity, good sense, and intellectual vigor—became the dominant virtues of the writing of the 18th century.

The 18th Century—Age of Reason

The most striking quality of the 18th century was its optimism. It was a time that celebrated the excellence of the human mind. All creation was believed open to scrutiny. Even the descriptive historical titles of the period express the spirit of improvement and progress. Many people of the time thought they were passing through a golden period similar to that of the Roman emperor Augustus. For this reason the name “Augustan” was given to the early 18th century. The century has also been called the Age of Enlightenment. Many writers of the era used ancient Greek and Roman authors as models of style. Hence the period in literature is often described as neoclassic.

Merchants and tradesmen achieved tremendous economic power at this time. Scientific discoveries were encouraged. Many important inventions—for example, the spinning jenny, the power loom, and the steam engine—brought about an industrial society. Cities grew in size, and London began to assume its present position as a great industrial and commercial center. In addition to a comfortable life, the members of the middle class demanded a respectable, moralistic art that was controlled by common sense. They reacted in protest to the aristocratic immoralities in much of the Restoration literature.

Addison, Steele, and Defoe

Courtesy of The National Portrait Gallery, London

The
modern essay began in two periodicals, The Tatler (1709–11), founded by Sir Richard Steele, and The Spectator (1711–12), founded by Steele and Joseph Addison. The kindly and witty essays by these men appealed to the middle class in the coffeehouses rather than to the nobility in their palaces. The aim of The Spectator, Addison said, was “ . . . to enliven morality with wit, and to temper wit with morality.” Steele and Addison’s essays are still models of clear, informal writing.

Most people think of Daniel Defoe only as the author of Robinson Crusoe (1719). By the time Defoe wrote that novel, however, he had already lived a life full enough for three ordinary mortals. Defoe was first of all a journalist, with an eye for a news story. Single-handedly he produced a newspaper, The Review (1704–13), which was an important ancestor of modern newspapers. The list of Defoe’s writings runs to more than 400 titles. In all of them, articles and books, is the kind of writing that Defoe recommended to others—a “plain and homely style.” Even the great novels of his last years, Moll Flanders (1722) and Robinson Crusoe, read like a modern reporter’s account of events.

Swift—Scornful Prose Genius

Jonathan Swift is one of the great prose writers of all time. Although born in Ireland, Swift always said that he was an Englishman. His defense of the Irish people against the tyranny of the English government, however, was whole-hearted. As much as he may have disliked Ireland, he disliked injustice and tyranny more. In a bitter pamphlet, A Modest Proposal (1729), he ironically suggested that the Irish babies be specially fattened for profitable sale as meat, since the English were eating the Irish people anyhow, by heavy taxation.

Swift’s masterpiece is Gulliver’s Travels (1726). It is a satire on human folly and stupidity. Swift said that he wrote it to vex the world rather than to divert it. Most people, however, are so delightfully entertained by the tiny Lilliputians and by the huge Brobdingnagians that they do not bother much with Swift’s bitter satire on human pettiness or crudity. No one has ever written English prose with greater sharpness and economy than Swift. His literary style has all the 18th-century virtues at their best.

Satire in Pope’s Poetry

Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, London

The genius
of Alexander Pope lay in satirical poetry. He said that he wanted to “shoot folly as it flies,/ And catch the manners living as they rise.” The Dunciad (1728) lists the stupid writers and men of England by name as dunces. These “dunces” proceeded to attack Pope in kind.

Pope excelled in his ability to coin unforgettable phrases. Such lines as “fools rush in where angels fear to tread” and “damn with faint praise” illustrate why Pope is the most quoted poet in English literature except for Shakespeare.

One of his lighter, though still satirical, poems is The Rape of the Lock (1712). It mockingly describes a furious fight between two families when a young man snips off a lock of the beautiful Belinda’s hair. Pope wrote in heroic couplets, a technique in which he has been unsurpassed. In thought and form he carried 18th-century reason and order to its highest peak.

New Voices in Poetry

James Thomson was another major poet of the period. In his simplicity and love of nature he foreshadowed Romanticism. Edward Young wrote The Complaint: or, Night Thoughts on Life, Death, and Immortality (1742–45), which put in practice his ideas about the personal quality of poetry. Robert Blair wrote one important poem, The Grave (1743), which advanced the “graveyard school” of poetry. William Collins was not a popular success in his lifetime, but his Ode on the Popular Superstitions of the Highlands of Scotland (published posthumously, in 1788) clearly marked a turn to the wild and irregular as proper subjects for poetry.

Courtesy of The National Portrait Gallery, London

Thomas Gray
was probably the most typical man of letters of the period. He was a scholar of ancient languages, a letter writer, and a critic as well as a poet. His Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (1751) is a collection of 18th-century commonplaces expressing concern for lowly folk.

George Crabbe was the last poet of the century who used the couplet in didactic poetry. His political and social satire The Village (1783) is a realistic appraisal of country life in his times. William Cowper exemplifies the strange decay of the spirit in the 18th century. He was given to extreme, morbid sensibilities. The Task (1785) is a falsely cheerful poem of a man who feels himself to be condemned.

Start of the Modern Novel

The 21st century can be grateful to the 18th for developing the novel. Samuel Richardson wrote the first modern novel—that is, one with a fairly well-planned plot, with suspense and climax, and with some attempt to understand the minds and hearts of the characters. This important novel, Pamela (1740), is made up of letters from Pamela Andrews. She tells of her unhappy attempts to get a husband, but the book ends happily.

Henry Fielding was amused by Pamela and parodied it in Joseph Andrews (1742), which purports to be the story of Pamela’s brother. Seven years later he wrote Tom Jones (1749), one of the greatest novels in English literature. It tells the story of a young foundling who is driven from his adopted home, wanders to London, and eventually, for all his suffering, wins his lady. The picture of English life, both in the country and in the city, is brilliantly drawn. The humor of the book is delightful.

The first novel by Tobias Smollett was Roderick Random (1748). Although it is a striking collection of adventures, it lacks the good plot of Tom Jones. Smollett’s best work is Humphry Clinker (1771). It tells, by means of letters, the story of a trip by the Bramble family across England, from Bath to London, and up into Scotland. The eccentric characters have many comic experiences.

Laurence Sterne wrote A Sentimental Journey (1768) partly in answer to a travel book written in ill temper by Smollett. Sterne’s greatest book is Tristram Shandy (1760–67), a topsy-turvy collection of episodes with little organization but a wealth of 18th-century humor.

Johnson and His Circle

If the 18th century made much of elegance and good manners, it also made much of honesty and common sense. These useful virtues were personified by Dr. Samuel Johnson, the leading literary figure of the century.

He wrote some sensible but uninspired poetry (The Vanity of Human Wishes, 1749). His novel, Rasselas (1759), is equally sensible and equally dull. His masterpiece is A Dictionary of the English Language (1755). Johnson’s common sense is shown in the clear definitions of words. He made some mistakes, however. A woman asked him why he defined “pastern” as “the knee of a horse.” Johnson answered, “Ignorance, Madam, pure ignorance.”

Johnson is immortal not only for what he wrote but also for his forceful personality and his wonderful conversation. This has been recorded by James Boswell in The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (1791), the greatest of English biographies. Boswell had a keen eye for significant detail and a proper reverence for his subject. He noted all of Johnson’s peculiarities—his rolling walk, his twitching face, his horrible table manners, his rudeness to stupid people—but he also saw his subject’s sturdy common sense and his honesty.

Johnson and others organized the Literary Club in 1764. The club gathered together the most celebrated artists of the time. The great orator Edmund Burke and the great historian Edward Gibbon were members. Another member was Oliver Goldsmith. He wrote one of the best plays (She Stoops to Conquer, 1773), one of the best poems (The Deserted Village, 1770), and one of the best novels (The Vicar of Wakefield, 1766) of the latter half of the 18th century. Johnson said of his versatile friend: “[He] touched nothing that he did not adorn.”

Richard Brinsley Sheridan, orator and political figure, was also a writer of comedies of manners that lampooned social affectations and pretentiousness. His masterpiece, The School for Scandal (1777), features malicious gossips with such revealing names as Sir Benjamin Backbite, Lady Sneerwell, and Mrs. Candour.

For another of his clever plays, The Rivals (1775), Sheridan invented the unforgettable Mrs. Malaprop, whose name remains to this day the designation for a person who misuses words. In one memorable speech she says, “if I reprehend anything in this world, it is the use of my oracular tongue and a nice derangement of epitaphs.”

The Romantic Movement in England

At the end of the 18th century a new movement in literature arose in England. It was called Romanticism, and it opposed most of the ideas held earlier in the century. Romanticism had its roots in a changed attitude toward humankind. The forerunners of the Romanticists argued that humans are naturally good; society makes them bad. If the social world could be changed, all men might be happier. Many reforms were suggested: better treatment of people in prisons and almshouses, fewer death penalties for minor crimes, and an increase in charitable institutions.

The Romanticists believed that all people are kin and deserve the treatment to which human beings are by nature entitled. Every person has a right to life, liberty, and equal opportunity. These ideas had been well stated in the American Declaration of Independence. In France a revolution of the common people began in 1789. Many English people hoped that the new democracies—France and the United States—would show the way for the rest of the world to follow. Along with democracy and individualism came other ideas. One of these ideas was that the simple, humble life is best. Another was that people should live close to nature. Thus the Romantic movement was inherently antiprogress, if progress meant industrialization.

Because of this concern for nature and simple folk, authors began to take an interest in old legends, folk ballads, antiquities, ruins, “noble savages,” and rustic characters. Many writers started to give more play to their senses and to their imaginations. Their pictures of nature became livelier and more realistic. They loved to describe rural scenes, graveyards, majestic mountains, and roaring waterfalls. They also liked to write poems and stories of such eerie or supernatural things as ghosts, haunted castles, fairies, and mad folk.

Thus Romanticism grew. The movement cannot be precisely defined. It was a group of ideas, a web of beliefs. No one Romantic writer expressed all these ideas, but each believed enough of them to set him apart from earlier writers. The Romanticists were emotional and imaginative. They acted through inspiration and intuition. They believed in democracy, humanity, and the possibility of achieving a better world.

Pre-Romantic Writers

Before the Romantic movement burst into full expression there were beginners, or experimenters. Some of them are great names in English literature. Robert Burns, a Scot whose love of nature and of freedom has seldom been surpassed, scorned the false pretensions of wealth and birth (“A man’s a man for a’ that.”). His nature lyrics are tenderly beautiful (To a Mountain Daisy); his sentimental songs are sung wherever young or old folks gather (Auld Lang Syne, Flow Gently Sweet Afton). His rich humor can still be felt in Tam o’ Shanter, To a Louse, and The Cotter’s Saturday Night.

Cowper had cried out against the inhumanity of slavery and political oppression. William Godwin and his wife, Mary Wollstonecraft, were also intense social critics. Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) was one of the first feminist books in all literature. Godwin’s An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793) had a great influence on the Romantic poets Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Shelley.

James Macpherson, a Scotsman, composed an elaborate epic poem which, he claimed, he had translated from the work of the ancient Gaelic bard called Ossian. Thomas Percy collected old English songs and ballads. His Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1765) is the best source for the ballads of medieval England.

Another group of forerunners of Romanticism included the writers of stories of terror and imagination—the Gothic school of “spine chillers.” Representative novels are The Castle of Otranto (1764), by Horace Walpole; The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794), by Ann Radcliffe; and The Monk (1796), by Matthew Gregory Lewis. All these novels are filled with the machinery of sensationalism—unreal characters, supernatural events, and overripe imagination. These qualities reached a fever pitch in Frankenstein (1818), by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley.

The First Great Romanticists

William Blake was both poet and artist. He not only wrote books, but he also illustrated and printed them. Many of his conservative contemporaries thought him insane because his ideas were so unusual. Chief among these “insane” ideas was his devotion to freedom and universal love. He was interested in children and animals—the most innocent of God’s creatures. As he wrote in Songs of Innocence (1789):

When the voices of children are heard on the green,
And laughing is heard on the hill,
My heart is at rest within my breast,
And everything else is still.

Certainly no one has put more wonder and mystery into beautiful melodic verse than did Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The strange, haunting supernaturalism of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798) and Christabel (1816) have universal and irresistible appeal.

A close friend of Coleridge’s for many years was William Wordsworth. Together they brought out a volume of verse, Lyrical Ballads (1798), which sounded the new note in poetry. This book really signalled the beginning of English Romanticism. Coleridge found beauty in the unreal, Wordsworth found it in the realities of nature.

From nature Wordsworth learned that life may be a continuous development toward goodness. He believed that if people heed the lessons of nature they will grow in character and moral worth.

Charles Lamb, a schoolmate of Coleridge’s, for the most part had little of the serious quality that one sees in the authors of Lyrical Ballads; nor was he an ardent lover of nature. A city man, he showed how a person could live happily among his books by his own fireside. His best-known essay is the playful Dissertation on Roast Pig (1822). In Tales from Shakespear (1807), he and his sister Mary rewrote many of Shakespeare’s plays into stories for children.

Interest in the past and in people and a love of rugged scenery are found in the works of Sir Walter Scott. The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805) and The Lady of the Lake (1810) are representative of Scott’s poems. Between 1814 and 1832 Scott wrote 32 novels. They include Guy Mannering (1815) and Ivanhoe (1819).

Jane Austen, a gifted writer of realistic novels, had difficulty finding a publisher for her skillfully drawn portraits of English middle-class people. Pride and Prejudice (1813) is her best-known work.

Among the lesser Romantic figures was Robert Southey, who was poet laureate of England and author of The Story of the Three Bears and The Battle of Blenheim. An industrious writer, he earned his living solely by his pen. William Hazlitt, on the other hand, earned his way by lecturing and by writing for critical magazines, such as The Edinburgh Review.

The Younger Romanticists

By 1812 the older generation of Romanticists had grown conservative. They no longer supported radical causes or championed the oppressed. The younger Romantic writers, however, quickly and noisily took up the cry for liberty and justice.

George Gordon Byron was an outspoken critic of the evils of his time. He hoped for human perfection, but his recognition of man’s faults led him frequently to despair and disillusionment (Manfred, 1817; Cain, 1821). Much of his work is satire, bitterly contemptuous of human foibles (Don Juan, 1819–24). His narrative poems (The Corsair, 1814; Mazeppa, 1819), about wild and impetuous persons, brought him success. He was a skilled versifier with a remarkable ear for rhythms. Byron influenced the youth of his day more than any other Romanticist. “Byronism” was a mood adopted by thousands of young men.

Percy Bysshe Shelley was the black sheep of a well-to-do, conservative family. Sonnets, songs, and poetic dramas flowed from his pen in the last four years of his life. Many of these works are profound and meditative (Prometheus Unbound, 1820). Others are exquisitely lyrical and beautiful (The Cloud, To a Skylark, Ode to the West Wind). Adonais (1821), his tribute to Keats, ranks among the greatest elegies.

John Keats was a greater poet than either Byron or Shelley. He believed that true happiness was to be found in art and natural beauty (Ode on a Grecian Urn, 1819; Ode to a Nightingale, 1819). His verses are lively testimony to the truth of his words in Endymion (1818):

A thing of beauty is a joy forever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness;

Other Romanticists who deserve mention are Leigh Hunt, whose Abou Ben Adhem continues to be a favorite; Thomas Moore, whose Believe Me, If All Those Endearing Young Charms is still a favorite of vocal groups; and Thomas De Quincey, known best for his Confessions of an English Opium Eater (1822). De Quincey, however, ought to be better known for his useful distinction between the “literature of knowledge” and the “literature of power.”

English Literature of the Victorian Age

The literature written during Queen Victoria’s reign (1837–1901) has been given the name Victorian. The basic characteristics of the period, however, would have been the same with or without Queen Victoria. Many great changes took place in the first half of the 19th century. Intellectual rebellions, such as those of Byron and Shelley, gave place to balance and adjustment. Individualism began to be replaced by social and governmental restraints. More and more people were gaining comfort and prosperity. Great Britain changed from a provincial nation to a worldwide empire. This progress brought its problems. Often individuals had to choose between ideals and material gain.

Science made rapid strides in the 19th century. The theory of evolution gave new insight into the biological sciences. Technical progress transformed Britain into a land of mechanical and industrial activity, but science also created doubts. Old ideas of faith and religion were put to serious tests by the new attitudes brought about by scientific progress. There was a reemphasis—oftentimes stuffy and pompous—of moral and religious beliefs. Literature, said some, should show people how to be good.

Nevertheless, many people in England were still poor—badly housed, undernourished, and sick. Progress, obviously, would not come by itself—it had to be earned. Freedom had to be guarded zealously. Would the spirit of man be destroyed by the machine? Would people become slaves to industry and the pursuit of wealth? Would art be replaced by skills and crafts? These were the questions that troubled England in the age of Queen Victoria.

The transition from the late Romantic to the Victorian period is best understood in the figure of Thomas Carlyle. His life spanned the years of Romantic excitement and Victorian achievement. Carlyle thoroughly repudiated the Romanticists. To him the universe seemed the “living garment of God.” In Sartor Resartus (1833–34) he counseled that the way out of the “Everlasting Nay,” or negative denial, was first to find what one could do, then to give all one’s energies to it. The effort of the moral will, he said, would bring freedom from despair.

Major Victorian Poets

Poets shifted from the extremely personal expression (or subjectivism) of the Romantic writers to an objective surveying of the problems of human life. The poems of Tennyson, Browning, and Arnold especially reflect this change. Much Victorian poetry was put to the service of society.

Alfred Tennyson attempted to give direction to his readers. Idylls of the King (1859) is a disguised study of current ethical and social conditions. Locksley Hall (1842), In Memoriam (1850), and Maud (1855) deal with conflicting scientific and social ideas. Much of Tennyson’s poetry, however, can be read without worrying about such problems. His narrative skill makes many of his poems interesting just as stories. For example, each of the Arthurian tales in Idylls of the King brings the reader a wealth of beauty and experience. The Lady of Shalott and The Death of Oenone are pleasing tales to young readers.

For those who have seen Rudolph Besier’s modern play The Barretts of Wimpole Street, Elizabeth and Robert Browning need no introduction. Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote the most exquisite love poems of her time in Sonnets from the Portuguese (1850). These lyrics were written secretly while she was being courted by Robert Browning.

Robert Browning is best remembered for his dramatic monologues. My Last Duchess (1842), Fra Lippo Lippi (1855), and Andrea del Sarto (1855) are excellent examples. The stirring rhythm of How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix (1845) and the simple wonder of The Pied Piper of Hamelin (1842) endear Browning to readers. His expressions of personal faith have inspired thousands of readers (Epilogue to Asolando, 1889; Rabbi Ben Ezra, 1864; Prospice, 1864). The poetic drama Pippa Passes (1841) is one of his finest efforts.

The poetry of Matthew Arnold is marked by an intense seriousness and classic restraint. Sohrab and Rustum (1853) is a fine blank-verse narrative. His elegiac poems on the death of his father, Dr. Thomas Arnold (Rugby Chapel, 1867), and of his friend Arthur Hugh Clough (Thyrsis, 1867) are profound and moving. His interest in the problem of making people aware of higher values of life caused him to quit writing poetry and turn to critical prose. As a critic, he drove his ideas home with clarity and force.

Arnold’s somber and disillusioned poem Empedocles on Etna (1852) was characteristic of the poetry dealing with the conflict between religion and science. A much more popular poem on the same theme was the free translation of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám (1859), by Edward FitzGerald. The poem was originally written by Omar, a Persian astronomer. FitzGerald claimed that the only course of action left to the man whose religious ideals had been destroyed by science was self-indulgence.

The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood

The Pre-Raphaelites, a group of painters and poets, rebelled against the sentimental and the commonplace. They wished to revive the artistic standards of the time before the Italian High Renaissance painter Raphael. Their poems are full of mystery and pictorial language. One member was Dante Gabriel Rossetti. His Blessed Damozel (1850) and Sister Helen (1870) are typical of this highly sensuous verse. Goblin Market (1862), by his sister Christina Georgina Rossetti, is one of the most fanciful poems in the language.

William Morris also was interested in both painting and poetry. His interest in handicrafts grew into a philosophy of art, and he dedicated the rest of his life to the attempt to bring a love of workmanship back into the English workingman’s life. This activity took two forms: the promotion of the crafts through such organizations as the Kelmscott Press and the promotion of the worker’s happiness through guild socialism. The Earthly Paradise (1868–70) is a series of tales linked by the same device used in The Canterbury Tales. In The Dream of John Ball (1888), a prose romance, Morris dealt with one of the leaders of the 14th-century revolt of Wat Tyler.

Another poet closely associated with the Pre-Raphaelites was Algernon Charles Swinburne. Swinburne wrote many verse dramas on classical and historical subjects (Mary Stuart, 1881). Many of his lyrics were criticized for their eroticism. All his poetry is filled with rich, melodic effects. Some critics have said that his verse is all “sound and fury signifying nothing.”

The direct opposite of Swinburne was Gerard Manley Hopkins, a Jesuit priest. His imagery and metrical technique are quite modern, and his subject matter is intensely religious. His poems, written between 1876 and 1889, were appreciated by his close friends but were not published until 1918 because their unusual rhythm and metaphors were considered too strange to be accepted earlier.

There were other notable poets writing at the end of the century. They included Francis Thompson, author of The Hound of Heaven (1893); Ernest Dowson, who wrote Cynara (1896); and the pessimist John Davidson, author of Fleet Street Eclogues (1893).

Victorian Novelists

The English novel came of age in the Victorian period. There had been a decline in novel writing at the beginning of the century, partly because fiction had turned to horror and crude emotionalism and partly because of religious and moral objections to the reading of novels.

Even Sir Walter Scott, at first, considered the craft of the novelist degrading and kept his authorship a secret. In the Victorian period, however, these attitudes toward the novel were to change.

With the rise of the popular magazine, authors began to experiment with serialized fiction. Soon they were writing novels. Such was the beginning of Charles Dickens’ Sketches by Boz (1836) and of William Makepeace Thackeray’s The Yellowplush Correspondence (1837–38).

Charles Dickens became a master of local color, as in The Pickwick Papers (1836–37). Few of his novels have convincing plots, but in characterization and in the creation of moods he was outstanding. By 1850 Dickens had become England’s best-loved novelist.

The talents of William Makepeace Thackeray produced a different type of novel. He was not a reformer, as Dickens was, and he was not moved to tearful sentiments by the world’s unfortunates. Instead, he attempted to see the whole of life, detached and critically. He disliked sham, hypocrisy, stupidity, false optimism, and self-seeking. The result was satire on manners. Literature would be the poorer without Vanity Fair (1847–48) and its heroine, Becky Sharp.

The novels of the Brontë sisters—Charlotte, Emily, and Anne—have very little to do with the condition of society or the world in general. Charlotte’s Jane Eyre and Emily’s Wuthering Heights (both 1847), especially, are powerful and intensely personal stories of the private lives of characters isolated from the rest of the world.

Later English novelists turned to the logical plot and the concept of a central theme. Anthony Trollope dealt with middle- and upper-class people interestingly, naturally, and wittily (Orley Farm, 1862). George Eliot was one of England’s greatest women novelists. In Silas Marner (1861) and Middlemarch (1871–72) she used the novel to interpret life.

Wilkie Collins was one of the earliest writers to build a novel wholly around an ingenious plot—the formula that is used in the modern mystery story. The Moonstone (1868) is his best.

Birth of the Psychological Novel

As biology and psychology advanced, it became clear that human beings could no longer be shown simply as heroes and villains. The study of human character demanded the examination of motives and causes rather than the making of moral judgments. To find the cause of action meant probing into the secrets of individual psychology.

George Meredith was one of the first to apply psychological methods to the analysis of his characters. For the average reader the brilliance of such novels as The Ordeal of Richard Feverel (1859) and The Egoist (1879) is obscured by the absence of plot and the subtleties of the language. Meredith was also a poet of merit, and his essay on comedy and the comic spirit is a masterly interpretation of the function of comedy in literature.

Thomas Hardy brought to fiction a philosophical attitude that resulted from the new science. He believed that the more science studies the universe the less evidence is found for an intelligent guiding force behind it. If there is just chance—meaningless blind force—in the universe, what hope is there for humankind? In a series of great novels, from The Return of the Native (1878) to Jude the Obscure (1895), Hardy sought to show how futile and senseless is humankind’s struggle against the forces of natural environment, social convention, and biological heritage.

Samuel Butler entered into the scientific controversies of his day. Holding that evolution is the result of the creative will rather than of chance selection, Butler wrote a novel about the relations of parents to children—The Way of All Flesh (1903). The point of the story, made with irony, is that the family restrains the free development of the child.

Charles Reade was, like Dickens, an ardent critic of the social abuses of his day. His most famous novel, The Cloister and the Hearth (1861), however, is a historical romance with a 15th-century setting. Filled with exciting incidents, intrigue, and witchcraft, it is based on the birth and boyhood of the Dutch scholar Erasmus.

George Gissing was greatly influenced by Dickens. His hatred of the degrading effects of poverty is reflected in many of his novels. Gissing’s most successful book was The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft (1903), the imaginary journal of a retired writer who lives in happy solitude in the country amid his beloved books (as Gissing always wished that he could do).

Romance and Adventure

Not all fiction of the late 19th century falls into the intellectual or scientific classification. Robert Louis Stevenson wrote stories in a light mood. His novels of adventure are exciting and delightful: Treasure Island (1883), Kidnapped (1886), The Master of Ballantrae (1889). Stevenson also wrote for adults. David Balfour (1893) and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886) are quite suited to adult tastes. As a short-story writer Stevenson ranks high. In light verse and in the informal essay Stevenson was unusually successful.

One of England’s most popular writers was Rudyard Kipling. He glamorized the foreign service and satirized the English military and administrative classes in India. He stirred the emotions of the empire lovers. Kipling also wrote delightful children’s tales. He was, however, neither a cheap versifier nor a vulgar imperialist. Whoever has not read Barrack Room Ballads (1892), Soldiers Three (1888), The Jungle Books (1894, 1895), and Captains Courageous (1897) has a treat in store.

Lewis Carroll
(Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) belongs in a category by himself. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) combines fantasy and satire in an inimitable way to the immense satisfaction of old and young.

19th-Century Drama

Drama did not flourish early in the 19th century. Romantic poetry had its dramatic phases, and Shelley and Byron both wrote verse dramas. These were closet dramas, intended for reading rather than for staging. Several of Tennyson’s plays were produced. The stage, however, was primarily interested in low melodrama and sentimental farce-comedy. Musical comedy achieved respectability when librettist William Gilbert teamed up with composer Arthur Sullivan in Trial by Jury (1875). Many successful collaborations by these two followed. (See alsoGilbert and Sullivan.)

As was the case among readers of fiction, some theatergoers matured. They were ready for satire, for serious treatment of social problems, and for drama that was well constructed. From the Continent came realistic, intellectual, and socially significant works.

The first English dramatists to attempt the “new drama” were Henry Arthur Jones and Sir Arthur Wing Pinero. Neither, however, could compare in wit and brilliance with two young contemporaries—Wilde and Shaw. Oscar Wilde, also a poet and novelist, wrote several fine plays. His Importance of Being Earnest (1895) is brittle in its humor and clever in its dialogue and is probably the best of his dramas.

The plays of George Bernard Shaw read even better than they act. They are important for their prefaces, sizzling attacks on Victorian prejudices and attitudes. Shaw began to write drama as a protest against existing conditions—slums, sex hypocrisy, censorship, war.

Because his plays were not well received (often they were not even allowed to be presented), Shaw wrote their now-famous prefaces. Not until after 1900 did the Shavian wit achieve acceptance on the stage. Controversial ideas and Shaw productions came to be synonymous. Shaw had the longest career of any writer who ever lived. He began in the Victorian Age and wrote until 1950.

Essayists and Historians

There are other great names in Victorian literature, chiefly in criticism and history. Thomas Babington Macaulay is known for his History of England (1848–61). Although it is often inaccurate, it represented a new concept of historical writing: history must be detailed, vivid, and pictorial.

Social, religious, and educational criticism was the field of John Henry Cardinal Newman. His essays on liberal education are especially important, and his Apologia pro Vita Sua (1864) is a fine autobiography.

John Stuart Mill dealt with political and economic problems. His essay On Liberty (1859) was the most important discussion of that subject since Milton’s time.

Of those who wrote about aesthetic matters, Ruskin and Pater are best remembered. John Ruskin made his first bid for fame in Modern Painters (1843–60). He studied architecture and wrote The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849). Ruskin’s ideas on art were at odds with social conditions. He became a reformer, devoting his writing to social and economic problems.

Walter Pater, in Marius the Epicurean (1885), developed a theory of beauty that ignored the social situation. It held that art could have no ethical content, that it must be a matter of personal ecstasy.

Modern English Literature

The growth of science and technology in the 19th century had held forth the promise of a new and richer life. It became clear, however, that what people did with their discoveries and their newly found mechanical power would depend upon their ability to master themselves. With new inventions upsetting old ways, it became increasingly difficult to find order or pattern in life. People began to talk of the “machine age” and to ask whether it was wholly good. Could humankind trust science to bring about a better life?

Other developments began to influence thought. Psychologists explored the mind and advanced varied and conflicting theories about it. Human behavior was no longer easily explainable. The new sciences of anthropology and sociology contributed to the upheaval of ideas. Religious controls and social conventions again were challenged. Naturally, there were changes in literary taste and forms. Old values were replaced by new values or were lost. Literature became pessimistic and experimental.

Early 20th-Century Prose

Before 1914 the post-Victorian writers were in the unhappy position of looking back at a well-marked literary road and looking ahead at a pathless jungle. They had to grapple with new forces—sociological, psychological, and scientific—because these forces were a part of their lives. They were writers in transition.

John Galsworthy turned to the social life of an upper-class English family in The Forsyte Saga (1922), a series of novels that records the changing values of such a family. Galsworthy also wrote serious social plays, including Strife (1909) and Justice (1910).

The first works of H.G. Wells were science fiction—The Time Machine (1895), The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896), The War of the Worlds (1898). Then he turned to social and political subjects. Of his many books criticizing the middle-class life of England, Tono-Bungay (1909), a satire on commercial advertising, is probably the most entertaining.

Arnold Bennett was a literary experimenter who was drawn chiefly to realism, the slice-of-life approach to fiction. The Old Wives’ Tale (1908) and Clayhanger (1910) are novels of people in drab surroundings.

Joseph Conrad is best known for his novella Heart of Darkness. Out of his years as a merchant-marine officer, he also wrote such remarkable novels as Lord Jim (1900) and Nostromo (1904). The scenes, chiefly of a wild and turbulent sea, are exotic and exciting. The characters are strange people beset by obsessions of cowardice, egoism, or vanity.

A master of the traditional plot was E.M. Forster. His characters are ordinary persons out of middle-class life. They are moved by accident because they do not know how to choose a course of action. A Passage to India (1924) is a splendid novel of Englishmen in India.

The naturalist W.H. Hudson will long be remembered for Green Mansions (1904), a fanciful romance of the South American jungles. Hudson’s skill as a nature writer, however, surpassed his skill as a novelist.

John Buchan, who served as governor-general of Canada, wrote exciting novels of adventure and mystery. The Thirty-Nine Steps (1915) is perhaps his best-known work.

Early 20th-Century Poetry

The poetry of the Edwardian and Georgian periods (Edward VII, 1901–10; George V, 1910–36) showed many new and unusual characteristics. Robert Bridges experimented in verse forms. He employed the usual subjects of the poet but brought strange rhythms and unusual music to his verse. The poet A.E. Housman was an anti-Victorian who echoed the pessimism found in Hardy. In his Shropshire Lad (1896) nature is unkind; people struggle without hope or purpose; boys and girls laugh, love, and are untrue.

John Masefield stressed the bold and the violent in his poetry. The Everlasting Mercy (1911), containing a Homeric prizefight, and Dauber (1912), the story of a painter among unsympathetic seamen, will please the most masculine mind. His descriptions of sea and land and of brutal people are powerfully realistic.

A different sort of poet from his contemporaries was Walter de la Mare. The wonder and fancy of the child’s world and the fantasy of the world of the supernatural were his to command. Peacock Pie (1913) is representative of his verse. As a novelist and teller of tales, De la Mare was a supernaturalist who believed in the reality of evil as well as of good.

Carol Rosegg/Martha Swope Associates

Sir James M. Barrie was probably the greatest master of the romantic-fantasy drama of the period. Beginning with The Admirable Crichton (1903), in which a butler becomes a Swiss Family Robinson character, and continuing through Peter Pan (1904) and Dear Brutus (1917), Barrie wrote of life as seen by children, for an audience that was tired of adult viewpoints.

Impact of World War I

World War I cut forever the ties with the past. It brought discontent and disillusionment. Humankind was plunged into gloom at the knowledge that “progress” had not saved the world from war.

World War I left its record in literature. Rupert Brooke, who died during the war, has been idealized for what is actually a rather thin performance in poetry. Wilfred Owen, also a war casualty, was far more realistic about the heroism and idealism of the soldier. Siegfried Sassoon and Edmund Blunden, both survivors of the carnage, left violent accounts of the horrors and terror of war.

In fiction there was a shift from novels of the human comedy to novels of characters. Fiction ceased to be concerned with a plot or a forward-moving narrative. Instead it followed the twisted, contorted development of a single character or a group of related characters.

Of these writers William Somerset Maugham achieved the greatest popular success. Of Human Bondage (1915) portrays a character who drifts. The Moon and Sixpence (1919), based on the life of the artist Paul Gauguin, continues the examination of the character without roots. Cakes and Ale (1930) shows how the real self is lost between the two masks—public and private—that every person wears.

The writer D.H. Lawrence was a man trying to find himself, trying to be reborn. This tragic, heroic search is reflected in his curious novels about the secret sources of human life. The records of his search and torment are his great novels Sons and Lovers (1913) and Women in Love (1920).

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James Joyce was searching for the secret places in which the real self is hidden. He believed he had found the way to it through human vocal language. To him language was the means by which the inner, or subconscious, feelings gained expression. Whereas “civilized” people try to control their spoken language, he believed, “natural” people let their language flow freely. If one could capture this free flow of language in writing, he would have the secret of humankind’s nature. Thus was born stream of consciousness, a technique that has been employed in much contemporary literature. Ulysses (1922), a vast, rambling account of 24 hours in the lives of Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus, was banned in some countries but has nevertheless greatly influenced modern fiction.

Joyce’s stream-of-consciousness technique was refined by Virginia Woolf. For her, reality, or consciousness, is a stream. Life, for both reader and characters, is immersion in the flow of that stream. Mrs. Dalloway (1925) and To the Lighthouse (1927) are among her best works. Katherine Mansfield, Dorothy M. Richardson, and Elizabeth Bowen also wrote fiction of this type.

While these writers were concerned with the realities of the mind, Aldous Huxley worked with the external world. He found it false, brutal, and inhuman. In Point Counter Point (1928), Brave New World (1932), and After Many a Summer Dies the Swan (1939), his cynicism reached its peak.

British Poetry After World War I

Poetry, like fiction, shifted from traditional forms and moral pronouncements to experimental verse and new techniques. The leader of the new school was T.S. Eliot, an American who became a British citizen (seeAmerican Literature).

In the 1930s one group of young poets arose who viewed the world with clearer eyes. They were, in Carlyle’s phrase, “yea-sayers” rather than cursers and complainers of life. They had hope but little optimism. Of this group Stephen Spender, C. Day-Lewis, Louis MacNeice, and W.H. Auden were the most effective. Each of them experimented with rhyme, rhythm, imagery, language, symbolism, and allusion. The result was an uneven poetry that more nearly represented the unevenness of life.

Although Eliot was an American who became a British citizen and Auden an Englishman who became an American, their earliest literary influences came to them in the countries of their birth. Hence Auden is usually considered an English poet and Eliot an American.

Another group of poets, like the stream-of-consciousness novelists, sought to escape from the world of ideas and problems. William Empson and Dylan Thomas, for example, found their inner chaos best expressed in ambiguity. To them, precision represented a departed world and today’s chaos is better portrayed through the confused, the irrelevant, and the inexact. Theirs was a literature filled with vivid imagery.

As poet and critic, Robert Graves advocated “pure” impersonal poetry. He is perhaps better known for his novels and studies of myths.

Literature After World War II

World War II had an even more profound impact than World War I on people’s ideas about themselves and their place in the universe. The terrible fact of the atom bomb’s existence shook their sense of stability. The postwar threat of the spread of Communism brought to attention the dangers to individual freedoms in a totalitarian state.

William Golding was one of the most significant postwar novelists. His first novel, and the one for which he will probably be best remembered, was Lord of the Flies (1954). This story tells of a group of schoolboys isolated on an island who revert to savagery. It is an imaginative interpretation of the religious theme of original sin. Among Golding’s later books are Pincher Martin (1956), Rites of Passage (1980), and The Paper Men (1983). Golding was awarded the Nobel prize for literature in 1983.

George Orwell published several books before the war, including The Road to Wigan Pier (1937) and Homage to Catalonia (1938). His greatest renown, however, came after the war, with the powerful anti-Communist satire Animal Farm (1945). This was followed in 1949 with his attack on totalitarianism entitled Nineteen Eighty-Four.

C.P. Snow was both a scientist and a novelist. His best-known nonfiction work is The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution (1959) in which he argues that people working in the arts and the sciences know very little of each other’s work; therefore, communication between them is almost impossible. As a novelist he will be best remembered for his series entitled collectively Strangers and Brothers. Published from 1940 to 1970, the novels are about the public and private life of a man named Lewis Eliot. The books are noted for their careful analysis of bureaucracy and the corrupting influences of power.

The turbulent 1930s, ending in World War II, turned many of the already established writers toward traditional values. T.S. Eliot, Edith Sitwell, Evelyn Waugh, and Graham Greene turned increasingly to Christianity. Of these, only Greene lived to have a career that endured into the 1980s. Among his better-known later novels are The Quiet American (1955), Our Man in Havana (1958), A Burnt-Out Case (1961), The Human Factor (1978), and Monsignor Quixote (1982).

Malcolm Lowry, another of the older generation of writers, published his finest work, Under the Volcano, in 1947. Now considered one of the major modern English novels, the story depicts the nightmarish world of an alcoholic Englishman living in Mexico.

Anthony Powell published five novels prior to the war, but none was as interesting or well done as his 12-novel series, A Dance to the Music of Time (1951–75). These novels are a satiric survey of British society from the 1920s through the 1960s as portrayed in the lives of a group of young men.

The literature of the 1950s was as varied as at any time, but much of it was made notable by the appearance of a new breed of writers called the Angry Young Men. Most of these were of lower middle-class or working-class backgrounds. Although not all personally known to one another, they had in common an outspoken irreverence for the British class system and the pretensions of the aristocracy. They strongly disapproved of the elitist universities, the Church of England, and the drabness of working-class life.

The trend of the period was crystallized in John Osborne’s play Look Back in Anger (1956), but it had been evident earlier in the writings of John Wain, author of Hurry on Down (1953), and in Lucky Jim (1953) by Kingsley Amis. Other writers of the generation included John Braine, author of Room at the Top (1957); Alan Sillitoe, author of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1958); and the playwrights Bernard Kops and Arnold Wesker.

Kingsley Amis is considered by many to be the best of the writers to emerge from the 1950s. The social discontent he expressed made Lucky Jim a household name in England. It is the story of Jim Dixon, who rises from a lower-class background only to find all the positions at the top of the social ladder filled. Later novels include That Uncertain Feeling (1955), Take a Girl Like You (1960), and Girl, 20 (1971). His 1984 novel Stanley and the Women was virulently antifeminist. His The Old Devils (1986) won the Booker Prize.

While Amis was a realist, he was also a humanist, attempting to put the writer’s talent in the service of society. Other novelists in this tradition are Iris Murdoch, Angus Wilson, Anthony Burgess, Doris Lessing, and Muriel Spark.

By the late 1950s Murdoch had gained recognition as one of the foremost novelists of the generation. Her books include Under the Net (1954), The Red and the Green (1965), The Sea, the Sea (1978), and Nuns and Soldiers (1980).

Wilson took as his subject the crisis of the educated British middle class after World War I. His collection of short stories The Wrong Set (1949) portrays the emotional crisis of World War II. His first novel, Hemlock and After (1952), is considered among his best.

Burgess was a novelist whose fictional exploration of modern dilemmas combines wit, moral earnestness, and touches of the bizarre. A Clockwork Orange (1962) was both comic and violent. His other novels include Enderby Outside (1968), Earthly Powers (1980), The End of the World News (1983), and The Kingdom of the Wicked (1985).

Doris Lessing wrote novels dealing with people caught up in social and political turmoil. Her Children of Violence, a series of five novels, begins with Martha Quest (1952) and ends with a vision of the world after nuclear disaster in The Four-Gated City (1969). She was also acclaimed for her mastery of the short story.

Muriel Spark’s early novels, including The Ballad of Peckham Rye (1960) and The Girls of Slender Means (1963), were characterized by a humorous fantasy. Her later books were of a sinister nature, including The Mandelbaum Gate (1965), The Driver’s Seat (1970), and Not to Disturb (1971). Her best-known works are Memento Mori (1959) and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961). She blended religious thought and sexual comedy in The Only Problem (1984).

After 1975 there were several intentionally experimental novels such as The White Hotel (1981) by D.M. Thomas and Midnight’s Children (1981) by Salman Rushdie. Rushdie’s later novel The Satanic Verses (1988) prompted Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini to issue a death threat against the author, because the book was considered blasphemous by Muslims. But the more traditional literature persisted in popularity. Anita Brookner wrote carefully crafted and unpretentious fiction in A Start in Life (1981) and Hotel du Lac (1984).

A later generation of satirical writers included Martin Amis, the son of Kingsley Amis. His novels included The Rachel Papers (1973), Money (1984), London Fields (1989), and The Information (1995). Julian Barnes wrote Flaubert’s Parrot (1984), A History of the World in 101/2 Chapters (1989), and The Porcupine (1992).

British poetry was as diverse as the rest of the literature in the postwar era. The poets who made the greatest impression were those firmly rooted in Western values who preferred clarity to clever obscurity. The outstanding ones were Thom Gunn, Ted Hughes, Donald Davie, and Philip Larkin.

The Nobel-prizewinning Irish poet Seamus Heaney, who spent his formative years amid the murderous divisiveness of Northern Ireland, wrote poetry particularly distinguished by its bringing together of opposites. Other significant poets to emerge after World War II included Jon Silkin, Elaine Feinstein, Charles Tomlinson, Elizabeth Jennings, Geoffrey Hill, and R.S. Thomas. The novelist Kingsley Amis also belongs to the group of better poets.

Frank Nelick

Additional Reading

Adams, R.M. The Land and Literature of England (Norton, 1983).Blamires, Harry. Twentieth Century English Literature (Schocken, 1982).Bowen, Elizabeth, and Burgess, Anthony. The Heritage of British Literature (Hudson, 1983).Evans, B.I. A Short History of English Literature, 4th ed. (Penguin, 1976).Hawthorn, J. British Working Class Novel in the 20th Century (Arnold, 1984).Sampson, George. The Concise Cambridge History of English Literature, 3rd ed. (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1970).Stapleton, Michael, ed. Cambridge Guide to English Literature (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1983).Abrams, M.H., ed. Norton Anthology of English Literature, 4th ed. (Norton, 1979).Amis, Kingsley, ed. The New Oxford Book of English Light Verse (Oxford, 1978).Cruse, Amy. English Literature Through the Ages (Folcroft, 1973).Dobson, Austin. A Handbook of English Literature (Arden, 1981).Gardner, Helen, ed. The New Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250–1950 (Oxford, 1972).Lowry, H.F., and Thorp, W., eds. Oxford Anthology of English Poetry, 2 vols. (Granger, 1979).Noyes, Russell, ed. English Romantic Poetry and Prose (Oxford, 1956).

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